thepianist53
Although I have used Cakewalk since 1995 (v. 3 for windows) and am currently using Platinum, my use cases are not very involved with sophisticated routing. I put my tracks in, mix, master (rinse-wash-repeat), done.  Therefore, I am really, really not quite getting the usefulness of this feature, or when/if I would use it. As far as my initial cursory look at the documention goes, it appears this is most useful to create different mixes/submixes, etc., or a way to use different effects on a track, but just part of the track-- I get the feeling it is so much more. I don't know if this is something I need/want, but can someone give me any testimonials or explain this to me like I'm a 5 year old?  I mostly write jazz and pop, and most of the time I'm using virtual instruments almost exclusively, and I strive for realism over using lots of synths or innovative effects, etc. I like doing my mixing/mastering using various plug ins like Izotope's suite of stuff, and most of this has served me well to release several albums, as well as some post-production work on field recordings and other folks' demos, etc. 
I'd like to take advantage of this feature once I more fully understand it, but my patience with routing is rather thin, for some reason (old age?). 
Thanks for tolerating such an open-ended and admittedly ignorant question. 

 

Hi,
Let me try and help out a bit. First thing to keep in mind: This is only a workflow/organization enhancement. I can't think of anything that we can do now that we couldn't before by using a combination of buses and sends. That said, essentially this update gives us two things:
 
1 - Basically, buses can now live in the track pane like other tracks and we can print them in place.
2 - Routing has gone from point-to-point to point-to-multipoint.
 
Here are a couple of examples of each of those concepts:
 
Buses as tracks:
 
Let's say I have a project with three acoustic guitars, each of which is multi-mic'd at body and neck, along with a full band (bass, e.git, drums and whatnot).
Old way of handling the acoustic guitars - Mix the two mics on the first guitar to taste. Route them to a bus called Ac.Git1 so I can deal with the summed mics as a single unit. Set the Ac.Git1 bus output to the Ac.Git.All bus so I can have one fader that controls ALL the acoustic guitars. Reapeat with acoustic guitar 2 and 3. This results in four buses (ac.git 1, 2, 3, and the group bus). Do the same process with each multi-mic'd instrument: snare, kick, maybe toms, and multi-mic'd guitar cabs. My bus pane is getting awfully crowded and now I'm doing most of my individual instrument mixing in the bus pane. This makes me sad.
 
New way - Instead of sending each Ac. Git to a bus and then to a group bus, I send them to an aux track that lives in the track pane, and then each aux track to it's instrument group bus. Now I have a track that represents each instrument, and a bus that represents each instrument group. Bus pane is no longer crowded, individual instruments are mixed in the track pane, and groups in the bus pane. The world is a good and happy place :)
 
 
Next change: routing has gone from point-to-point to point-to-multipoint:
 
The idea with this concept is that Sonar used to let us choose one, and only one, output for any track or send. Now we can have that track or send go to as many places as we want.
 
Let's say that I have a single kick drum track and I want to create a "thud" track and a "snap" track to go with it.
 
Old way - Duplicate the kick track twice, do my FX and whatnot, set the output of each track to a bus called "Kick.Combined", and route that bus to another bus called "Drums" (you could also do this with sends). This results in additional buses in the bus pane and duplicated tracks (assuming you're not doing this with sends).
 
New way - Since we can now route the ouptut of a track to multiple destinations, I route the kick track to a patch point and create three new tracks whose inputs are set to that patch point. Do your FX and whatnot on those Aux tracks, and then set the output of those Aux tracks to a patch point. Create another aux track called "kick combined" whose input is the patch point from your effected kick tracks and whose output is the drum bus. Hide the tracks feeding the kick combined track. Voila: one track that represents the combined kick drum instrument in the track pane, and one bus for the drums instrument group.
 
So, really it's just about organization and routing flexibility. Again, you could absolutely do all this stuff before with sends and buses, this way you just have more (and I think better) organizational capabilities.
 
Dean

Anderton
Add speaking of adding new functions to your repertoire..."Five Reasons Why Patch Points Rock" is now posted in the Cakewalk Blog. ...

Craig, thanks for shairing. I've lived a sheltered life and couldn't figure out what I could use Patch Points for. You're simple examples have made it very clear. Thanks again.
 
Walt